Men Explain Things To Me By Rebecca Solnit Summary

Writer, historian, and activist Rebecca Solnit is a writer who focuses on feminism, western and indigenous history, popular power, and social change. In "Men Explain Things to Me," Solnit took on what often goes wrong in conversations between men and women. She wrote about men who wrongly assume they know things and wrongly assume women don't, about why this arises, and how this aspect of the gender wars works. Men explain things to women whether or not they know what they’re talking about. Some men. According to her, every woman knows what she’s talking about. It’s the presumption that makes it hard, at times, for any woman in any field; that keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that crushes young women into silence

The fear of that violence limits most women in ways they’ve gotten so used to that they hardly notice and hardly address. The author points out, that there’s no good reason colleges spend more time telling woman how to survive predators than telling the other half of their students not to be predators. This is embedded into our political and legal system, which before feminism didn’t recognize most domestic violence, or sexual harassment and stalking, or date rape, or acquaintance rape, or marital rape, and in cases of rape still often tries the victim instead of the rapist as though only perfect lady could be assaulted or believed. When a woman says something about male misconduct, she is almost always portrayed as delusional, a malicious conspirator, a pathological liar, a whiner who doesn’t recognize it’s all in fun. They are asked questions on their choice of dress or maybe they did something to provoke or encourage this behavior. Solnit used a personal experience where she “objected to the behavior of a man, only to be told that the incidents had not happened at all as she said, that she was being subjective, delusional, overwrought, dishonest and in a nutshell, female” and therefore not a reliable witness for her own life. The truth is not their property now or ever. The implications that women as a

It is taking a far greater tool on the physical and mental health of our country than any known disease”. In the years that followed, this problem gained several names. These names include sexism, misogyny, inequality and oppression. Another term, which I have never heard, is sexual entitlement. The meaning of this is in the actual name, the idea that you are entitled to sex. Solnit uses a 2013 BBC study on rape in Asia where they concluded that in the many cases that motive rape was the idea that a man has the right to have sex with a woman regardless of her desires. In other words, his rights override the woman’s, or as Solnit questions maybe she doesn’t have any. This ridiculous sense of being owed sex is everywhere. She goes in to detail on how when she was a little girl she was told, like many young girls, that something we did, said, wore or just the way we looked or the fact that were female had excited desires we were obligated to satisfy. We owed them which means they had a right to us. This is what fuels rape culture. Rape culture normalizes these absurd nuances that a woman’s sole purpose is to please a man in every way possible and if she does not want to partake then it’s not the man’s problem because that is her job and she has to do it anyway or